Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Boy would I have liked to have been tapping the phone lines between Washington and Baghdad on Saturday afternoon.

I would love to know exactly what people in the Bush White House were saying to one another, and more importantly what they were saying to Baghdad, after Der Spiegel published its now-famous interview with the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, in which he in essence endorsed Barack Obama's withdrawal timetable. Bush officials acknowledged that they did indeed call the Maliki government for, ah, clarification. I bet they did.

. . . Whatever happens over the course of this trip, Maliki's statement is the biggest story so far in this general-election campaign. It will resonate through the fall, and it started Obama's trip off on a more positive note that he could have dared to imagine, and that frankly he did little to deserve, aside from not being involved with the strategic mistakes made during this war. Apparently, to Maliki, that's enough.

-- MICHAEL TOMANSKI

When Gina Gray took over as the public affairs director at Arlington National Cemetery about three months ago, she discovered that cemetery officials were attempting to impose new limits on media coverage of funerals of the Iraq war dead—even after the fallen warriors’ families granted permission for the coverage. She said that the new restrictions were wrong and that Army regulations didn’t call for such limitations.

Six weeks after The Washington Post reported her efforts to restore media coverage of funerals, Gray was demoted. Twelve days ago, the Army fired her.

-- DANA MILBANK

Only 37 percent of Jews view the Connecticut Independent [Joseph Lieberman] in a favorable light compared to 48 percent who have a negative perception. As for Obama, 60 percent of Jews view him favorably while 34 percent view him unfavorably.

-- SAM STEIN

The Bushco Torture Brigade is on a bad luck streak in dancing school. Four beatdowns by the Supreme Court on the legality/Constitutionality of their torture and trial program is beyond bad. Four drubbings of this type for a Presidential Administration, during a supposed time of war, is simply unheard of.

When Bushco got the ruling late last week that they could proceed with their first gulag trial against Salim Hamdan, they were ecstatic. Smug in the self satisfaction that the first show trial, of the many they have been pining for, would not be further delayed, Hamdan was rushed to the Guantanamo dock and the trial commenced . . . So far, so good.

But wait, there's more; and it's not good for Bushco's cherished show trial dreams. Not even one full day into the show, and even the hand selected military judge, Keith Allred, is sending Bushco up the proverbial creek without their torture evidence paddle.

-- BMAZ

[T]he talk of a McCain VP selection this week is a diversion to try to drum up some positive coverage. However, it cannot be encouraging for admirers of Jindal and proponents of rational decision-making in the McCain campaign (ha!) that McCain is headed to Louisiana to meet with Jindal. . . . As I have said several times before, selecting Jindal would be a grave mistake for McCain and it would be bad news for Jindal, Louisiana and the Republican Party. It would be the Republicans’ political equivalent of eating their seed corn. Bobby Jindal will do a lot of people an enormous service, not least to the people who voted for him, if he turns down any McCain offer he may receive.

-- DANIEL LARISON

The many and deepening cuts at newspapers across the country are starting to take a toll on their content, according to a study . . . The challenge newspapers must meet immediately is to find more revenue on the Internet, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's study, called "The Changing Newsroom: What is Being Gained and What is Being Lost in America's Daily Newspapers." Newspaper managers need to "find a way to monetize the rapid growth of Web readership before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their competitive advantage disappears." Stories are shorter overall, the study found, and staff coverage tends to focus on local and community news. "America's newspapers are narrowing their reach and their ambitions and becoming niche reads," the study said. Even when foreign and national news makes it into the papers, it is being relegated to less prominent pages. Aw, just blame the bloggers

-- THE NIGHTOWL

I suppose I should be heartened to see the NYTimes editorial board rejecting a first draft of an editorial penned by John McCain on account of it wholly lacking substance, but it sure would be nicer if they applied the same standards to their actual news reporting — and here I’m thinking the usual suspects like Adam Nagourney, Jodi Wilgoren (who infamously wrote a front page profile of Kerry’s butler in 2004), Bumiller, the list goes on.

But yeah, baby steps . . .

-- SEBASTIAN